Cue the Seminar

Well, remember the time I wrote about the Jess Martin seminar disaster? Yeah. We left there feeling both defeated& determined. It was bad. I wasn’t sure what to do about the upcoming seminar.. I wavered back& forth on it before deciding that we were more determined than defeated. I wrote out all the suggestions from Jess. We improved. I’m tempted to say we’ve even improved a lot.

‘I only do what I want. And I don’t want to do what you want me to do.’

We put in a lot of hours. We hiked, practiced recalls, practiced tugging, played agility& made it all fun. I did agility& recalls in weird places with Penny. We practiced reinforcements I could bring into the ring with us. I am cautiously optimistic for this coming Monday. Penny will, with any luck, show some progress from the last time we went. I am no longer stressed about her running away. I can take a deep breath& relax these days. I’m not concerned with perfect, just improvement.

I love my dog& I pray she loves me enough to get through her focus/ stress issues to work for me. I am packing her favorite toys, her special dog treats& a whole lot of hope. We spent today with the crazy Border Collie playing tug, chase& practicing recalls in a baseball field. Tomorrow, we will make the drive to New Brunswick& Monday we find out if all our hard work is going to pay off. I am bringing my camera& will get someone to video us since I will actually know some people there this time.

The weather is looking promising, I’ve got a good dog buried deep under that babydog somewhere I’m sure& I know we’ve certainly put the effort in! Now, it’s all up to us to show Jess that we did what she suggested. Keep your fingers crossed. We are aiming for success but not planning to be too disappointed with failure! I am keeping in mind she’s not a Border Collie, she’s a Vizsla. I only need 30 seconds of focus to get around an agility course. I only need to keep her engaged with me for that long. We can do this. My attitude is positive, my mind is in the right place& I just have to remember I am the luckiest person there because I get to share my world with my red dog, Penny!